2014 Dixie Solo National Tour Recap
AJ Snyder waits in grid.
Ready, Set, Go! The Kestrel Racing team headed down to South Georgia Motorsports Park in Adel Georgia this past weekend to kick off the 2014 Solo National season. Jeff Eng and AJ Snyder once again teamed up to compete in the spec Civic class otherwise known as STC with Jeff’s ’91 Honda Civic Si. This years event was changed back to a Championship Tour event from the previous years Match Tour.
The weather started out great with sunny skies and moderate temperatures, but this was soon to change and have a big affect on the outcome of the standings. As always competition was fierce with seven drivers competing in STC this year. The course on Saturday was a fast out and back design starting from left to right. AJ got an early lead over the rest of the field, but was edged out of first place by David Stanford who pulled off a spectacular last run beating AJ by just .060 sec. Jeff ended up in 5th place .344 sec back from first. With less than .400 sec separating the top 5 drivers, everyone was anxious to improve their times on Sunday, unfortunately mother nature had other plans.
The weather forecast for Sunday was starting to look ominous with a chance of heavy rain and thunderstorms in the afternoon, but the morning looked fine. Unfortunately STC was running in the last heat which meant they would most likely be affected by the weather, which ended up being the case. The first two heats ran fine without any weather issues, but the wind was picking up and the clouds were getting darker by the hour. The drivers held out hope that if we got done with the first heats smoothly there would be a chance they could beat out the storm, but timing delays and car mechanical issues removed this hope. By the time third heat was in grid and ready to run, the sky opened up and started to rain hard with thunder and lightening all around. After about 15 minutes the event was called off by the event officials, ending the drivers chances of improving in the standings.
